Jobs Open Data Challenge
What was the Jobs Open Data Challenge?
The Jobs Open Data Challenge was a part of The Open Data Challenge Prize Series, which was a series of seven challenge prizes to generate innovative and sustainable open data solutions to social challenges. It was funded by the Technology Strategy Board,(now known as Innovate UK) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, now known as the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
What did we do?
The open data assessment and user research undertaken by Uscreates prompted over 20 teams to submit a product or service idea to the challenge. At the midpoint, we invited a selection of those teams who had submitted an idea to come along to a weekend event to take their idea further. We held the Jobs Creation Weekend at The Shed, Manchester Metropolitan University on the weekend of 25 and 26 April.
The Creation Weekend encourages participants to focus on the judging criteria that they would be assessed against on the Sunday afternoon. The pitch and input on open data, social impact and user research feature early on. In fact, the weekend really began two weeks beforehand – at the Late Meetup for the challenge. Here, we brought the selected teams together to meet the competition, consider collaboration, hear from specialists in user research and social impact and learn a little about the structure and expectations of the weekend. The weekend culminates in the selection of three finalists who spend the next two months developing a minimum viable product and refining their pitch. Then, one team was selected to win the final £50,000 prize in early July 2015.
Why did we do this?
Open data has the potential to power tools that provide solutions to real problems. Although the UK is the world leader in releasing open data, its use in informing real world solutions has been limited and fragmented, with innovative start-ups lacking support and data expertise to scale to a sustainable business level.
This series of challenges aimed to galvanise a new community to use open data as the key ingredient in helping solve social problems. The challenges helped SMEs and start-ups to work with data providers, industry experts and business leaders to develop new ways to reuse available data, creating sustainable business opportunities.
The challenge was funded by
Winner – PiC (Performance in Context)
PiC (Performance in Context) helps recruiters consider performance in light of a candidate’s background using publicly available data. It also responds to businesses who want to increase social diversity.
The finalists
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Bus Start
Working with city governments, communities and private companies to design bus routes that connect people with better, and new, jobs.
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Pikhaya Smart Streets
A tool to attract small, independent businesses to discover commercial opportunities in deprived urban centres.
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Performance in Context (PiC)
Supports recruiters to make more informed recruitment decisions by understanding their applicants’ performance in context.
Who were the challenge judges?
- Heather Savory, Independent Chair of the Open Data User Group (ODUG), Member of the Public Sector Transparency Board
- Gavin Starks, CEO IcebreakerOne.org & Dgen.net
- Helen Goulden, CEO The Young Foundation
- Deborah Williams, Owner/Manager ACE
- Bill Thompson, Broadcaster
- Maria Bojanowska, Head of National Programmes at The British Museum
- Tony Burton, Consultant
